In this episode we talked about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) by Alan Garner.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast and twitter @stillscaredpod! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

If you wish to see Ali's drawing of a mara, their instagram is Liminitch.

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we’re joined by special guest Ali to talk about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. Enjoy!

Ren Hail, O eaters of Toadstools! I say again! We had a little snafu but I’m doing the same intro because I like it.

Ali It was pretty good. It holds up to repititon.

Adam I mean, I can imagine you gnawing on a toadstool while recording, crouched there by your laptop.

Ren Hi Adam and hello Ali our returning guest, our folk horror and standing stone correspondent.

Ali Well thank you, I’m honoured by that description.

Ren Who you may remember from such episodes as Paperhouse and Marianne Dreams, and Children of the Stones!

Ali It’s nice to be back.

Ren Today we are back after something of a haitus, for various reasons. It’s fine, we’re here, we’re just ailing, and today we’re talking about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner, which I think was your suggestion Ali?

Ali I certainly suggested Alan Garner broadly, he’s probably written a few books that could make an appearance, but this is definitely a good one to start with.

Ren This is more fantasy than we usually trend but it’s definitely dark fantasy. It fits the remit, I think.

Ali It definitely falls into spooky, I think, in places anyway.

Ren Alan Garner is an English author still alive, at the time of recording he’s 89 years old, and he writes novels, primarily for children, which are rooted in fantasy and folklore, probably the best known of which is The Owl Service, from 1967.

But the Weirdstone of Brisingamen is his debut novel, first published in 1960, and therefore one fo the older things that we’ve talked about on the podcast, apart from the Water Babies!

Adam Thankfully this isn’t puritanical Victorian horror.

Ali It’s quite funny to think about The Water Babies as being the founding stone of children’s horror.

Adam The Reverend didn’t know what he had wrought!

Ren This novel, like many of Garner’s is set in Cheshire, which is in the North-West-ish of England. It has Liverpool and Manchester above it and Wales to the West.

Adam Have you ever been to Cheshire, Ali?

Ali Well, Alderley Edge is quite close to Manchester, I’ve been to Stockport a few times because I have family there. My brother actually works in Alderley Edge, so he commutes there. It’s obviously expanded quite a bit since 1960, I think quite a lot of footballers live there.

Adam What kind of landscape is it?

Ali Well, I probably know more about the landscape from this book than from actually going there, because you don’t necessarily get the strongest sense of landscape from the town. But as Garner says it’s pretty flat but Alderley Edge is this peculiar hill that sticks up out of the plane.

Ren And now if you visit Alderly Edge there is an augmented reality app, that you can download and as you explore the Edge you can see wizards and knights and white horses appearing around the landscape.

Ali Wow! Okay.

Ren That’s just something I found out when I was researching!

Ali That’s amazing. I would be very interested to know what he thinks of that.

Ren So this story is inspired by the legend of the Wizard of the Ledge, which Garner presents as a prologue.

But because i started researching this and went on a diversion I’m going to tell you about it

So the histories of this legend online attribute the first written account of the legend to a letter by someone called Parson Shrigley of Alderley to a newspaper called the Manchester Mail in 1805. Which sounds plausible, except as far as I can tell there has never been a newspaper called the Manchester Mail. Yeah.

Ali Obliging gasp

Ren There are quite a few actual Manchester newspapers, and some of them have been lovingly documented online, but I could not find any evidence of this 1805 letter by Parson Shrigley.

Ali I mean, Garner’s claim is that it goes back a lot further than 1805 because he says in at least one interview that he’d traced the story back and claims that it’s pre-Authurian and in fact goes back to the Bronze Age. I don’t know what his evidence for this is and he does in the same interview point out that he is a writer and he does makes things up.

Adam Like quite a lot of older children’s fiction, I’m thinking also of Moondial, it has this strange shifting sense of time, it’s almost like various times are being overlaid on top of each other, there’s this deep time as the character’s move through the landscape. And there’s this sense that you get in Narnia, to be fair, of an adventure that takes both aeons and a week, that things are both small and vast at the same time. In the way that they can feel when you’re a child, the way the summer holiday stretches out for ever when it’s only six weeks.

Ali I think that idea of deep time is quite a core part of Garner’s work which changes over the course of his career, but there’s often a sense of time and connecting back.

We have a candidate for claim of the Week.

Adam Claim of the Week!

Ali In that he does claim that he’s traced via the legend of the Wizard of Alderley Edge that he’s traced this far back to the Bronze Age.

RenI’m chosing to believe him.

Ali In the interview where he makes this claim claim he does say that he’s a writer and his job is to makes things up, so I don’t know to what extent he’s interested in providing hard evidence for that.

Adam It’s a deeper truth, the filmmaker Werner Herzog says this: “It’s an ecstatic truth, it’s not the truth of accountants.”

Ali I think Garner would be pretty on board with this approach!

Adam So what is this ancient stone age myth then, Ren?

Ren The short version of this legend is that a farmer is riding his milk-white mare to the fair in Macclesfield, when a tall old man with a long hair and beard appears and asks to buy the horse. The farmer refuses, but the old man says that no-one will buy the mare, beautiful as she is, and he will be waiting for the farmer that evening.

And so it happens, no one buys the horse and that evening the old man appeared again, he took the farmer to a great rock in the hillside, touched his staff to it and it split in two. Inside there was a pair of iron gates, then a tunnel, and a cavern filled with the sleeping forms of one hundred and forty knights, and beside each but one a milk-white mare:

“Here they lie in enchanted sleep,” said the wizard, “until a day will come— and come it will — when England shall be in direst peril, and England’s mother’s weep. Then out from the hill these must ride, and in a battle thrice lost, thrice won, upon the plain, drive the enemy into the sea.”

So. So, that’s the set-up and then we get our protagonists.

Who are Colin and Susan, who are sent to stay with Bess and Gowther Mossock in Alderley Edge. Bess had been the children’s mother’s nurse, and she’s happy to take Colin and Susan in for six months when their mother has to join their father ‘abroad’. So long, parents! Summarily dispatched from the story.

The children set off wandering and are warned by Gowther not to stray into any of the old mine tunnels, and stumble across first an inn called The Wizard, and then “a stone trough into which water was dripping from an overhanging cliff, and high in the rock was carved the face of a bearded man, and underneath was engraved: Drink Of This And Take Thy Fill For The Water Falls By the Wizard’s Will”

Which is a real landmark of Alderley Edge.

Ali Alan Garner says it was carved by his great-grandfather.

Ren Oh really! So they’re like, “huh, lot of wizard chat around here, wonder what that’s all about”.

Adam That’s not a verbatim quote.

Ren You’re right, that’s not a verbatim quote. And they go and ask Gowther, but are intercepted by a middle-aged woman in a car, who insists that they accept a lift, even as the farm is only a few yards away, then begins muttering in Latin when they refuse.

Adam Oh it’s awful! It’s a real stranger danger moment this, it was like when I was eight and was walking to primary school or through the village and some man slowed down to ask me for directions and I went” “No! No!” and ran off.

Ali Aww!

Adam Because who knows what kind of directions he wanted, the monster! I really internalised that kind of stuff. She’s like a witch from Roald Dahl, it’s awful.

Ali The description of her is quite Dahl-esque in some ways. I enjoyed in particular how some of the more insulting bits he attributes to Susan.

Ren Yeah! It's like, ”she was fat,” said Susan. Alright!

Adam Does anyone want a go at reading the Latin bits? The voice in my head isn’t very good at speaking Latin so I’m sure the voice outside my head isn’t any better.

Ali I can have a go?

“Omptator,” said the woman. “I … beg your pardon.” “Lapidator.” “I’m sorry …” “Somniator.” “Are you …?” “Qui libertar opera facitis …”

Adam “I’m not much good at Latin”

Ren An uncomfortable encounter, I think it’s fair to say. Gowther tells them that this is Selina Place, and the Mossock’s agree it sounds like she’s up to something.

Another interesting thing about this encounter Susan has a raindrop shaped crystal set in a bracelet, that she calls her Tear and when the light catches it just so, she sees inside it “A twisting column of blue fire, always moving, never ending, alive and very beautiful”.

Bess calls it the Bridestone, and explains that it came to Susan’s mother from Bess’s own family, passed down through the generations. But when they encountered Selina Place, the crystal had clouded over and become the colour of whey.

So the next time they go exploring, they find themselves in a dell with an uneasy atmosphere, and this is where they first encounter the svart-alfar, so I will read a description of these creatures.

“They stood about three feet high and were man-shaped, with thin, wiry bodies and limbs, and broad, flat feet and hands. Their heads were large, having pointed ears, round saucer eyes, and gaping mouths which showed teeth. Some had pug-noses, others thin snouts reaching to their chins. Their hides were generally of a fish-white colour, though some were all black, and all were practically hairless. Some held coils of black rope, while out of one of the caves advanced a group carrying a net woven in the shape of a spider’s web.”

Adam, would you like to read what happens on page 33?

Adam “The edge of the swamp was a mass of bodies. The rising moon shone on their leathery hides and was reflected in their eyes. Colin could see white shapes spreading out on either side to encircle the rock; they were in no hurry now, for they knew that escape was impossible.

Colin climbed after his sister. He ached in every muscle and was trembling with fatigue. When the circle was complete the creatures began to advance across the swamp, moving easily over the mire on their splayed feet. Ever closer they came, till the rock was surrounded.

From all sides at once the ropes came snaking through the air, as soft as silk, as strong as iron, and clung to the children as though coated with glue; so that in no time at all Colin and Susan fell helpless beneath the sticky coils, and over them swarmed the mob, pinching and poking, and binding and trussing, until the children lay with only their heads exposed, like two cocoons upon the rock.”

Ren So at this point I was like “Okay, this is children’s horror!”

Ali Yeah.

Adam They’re really nightmarish creatures, are they later described as being goblins, basically?

Ali I think they are briefly referred to as goblins

Adam They don't quite seem Goblin-like to me?

Ali They’re a little bit different.

Adam They’re more like bogeys, like Fungus the Bogeyman, I’m imagining them as little little foetal versions of Fungus the Bogeyman. Or slugs or larvae maybe, I’m not sure.

Ren I like that they have a variety of noses, some of them have pug noses and some of them have snout noses. That’s a particularly arresting detail.

Adam And the snout noses sound pendulous, drooping down to their chins.

Ren They don't know why they’re being chased by all these creatures —

Ali It’s quite disconcerting because they just appear. They’re just exploring the Edge as they were the previous day and then suddenly they’re surrounded. There’s no run-up, it’s very sudden and quite jarring.

Adam Yeah, It’s like you’re starting a DnD campaign and you’re all level 0 characters wandering around a shire or a nice little wood and suddenly you’re being attacked by horrible goblins.

Ren And then a wizard comes and saves you!

Adam A very ostentatious arrival for our wizard.

Ren He turns up and dispels from the darkness: “Since when have men-children grown so mighty that you must needs meet two with hundreds? Run, maggot- breed of Ymir, ere I lose my patience!”

So this is Cadellin, the wizard of the ledge and he brings Colin and Susan into the cave.

Ali There’s a door in the rock above the trough which he opens.

Ren He cracks the rock with his staff, it’s very impressive.

Ali I mention that because it made an impression on me, I guess, the idea of there being a door behind rock, because when you look at rock faces in this part of the world, broadly similar kind of geology around here and sometimes it looks like they’ve been cut out, especially in places that have been quarried.

Ren It made me think of the hills near Hebden Bridge, where I’ve visited a few times. There’s hills there that are incredibly lumpy because they’ve been mined over decades and you can imagine things hidden in them.

So, Cadellin explains that is is called Fundindelve (lots of names here) and it was created to defeat Nastrond, the Great Spirit of Darkness, when he should return to the land from the abyss of Ragnarok. The worthy knights in the cave are in an enchanted sleep, guarded by ‘the strongest magic the world has known’.

Which is sealed with Firefrost, in the Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and Cadellin was placed at Fundindelve to guard the sleepers and rouse them when the time comes to send them out against Nastrond.

But, there’s a catch. Cadellin has lost the Weirdstone some hundreds of years back, and should it fall into the hands of Nastrond he could break the spell.

Adam I love the idea that he thinks he might have lost it seemingly by just dropping it among a vast expanse of jewels precious stones, he’s like “I had to spend the last seven years of my life picking up those stones one by one to check they’re not Firefrost”. Like, “No, that’s a pebble”.

Ren The children are like: “Wow, they’re so beautiful!” and he’s like “You wouldn’t think that if you’d had to pick up every single one of them.”

Ali Poor Cadellin.

Ren Poor Cadellin. But he does know that Firefrost is safe for now, as long as the torches in the cave still burn, but he fears everyday that he will see them falter.

So, you might have figured out where this is going - the Weirdstone of Brisingamen is the same as the Bridestone, in Susan’s tear bracelet, and that’s why they were chased by the svarts.

Ali But importantly, Cadellin doesn’t see it and the children don’t make this connection. It’s the first in a bit of a running theme of things just not going their way. Which is the main narrative driver, really.

Ren Like in Box of Delights “It was under my hand!”

Adam It is a bit like they’re playing a role-playing game and they keep rolling ones, but the game master doesn’t want to kill off the characters so they’re like “God, I have to find some way to keep them alive, they’re going to have to go the long way”.

Ren Poor Cadellin. The children don’t realise this until the next day when they’re in a Cafe in the village and as soon as they realise they set off for Stormy Point and Cadellin as fast as they can, but once they reach the woods they find themselves smothered in a rolling fog, and become caught in a trap.

Adam It’s because they take a short cut! It’s terrible, they’re like: “Should we go this way?” “Nah, the other way’s a bit quicker”. Cadellin told them not to go that way, it’s really dangerous, but it’s a bit quicker and then they get caught up, and Cadellin’s like: “Oh, well, it probably wouldn’t have made that much difference, children.” I bet it would have made all the difference in the world! He’s just being nice!

Ali Low wisdom scores.

Adam But they do get caught, as you say, by these rolling mists that come in.

Ren "As if in some dark dream, Colin and Susan strained to tear themselves free, but they were held like wasps in honey.”

And unfortunately, they are intercepted by Grimnir.

"Slowly the figure rose from its seat and came towards them. Of human shape it was, though like no mortal man, for it stood near eight feet high, and was covered from head to foot in a loose habit, dank and green, and ill concealing the terrible thinness and spider strength of the body beneath. A deep cowl hid the face, skin mittens were on the wasted hands, and the air was laden with the reek of foul waters.”

Skin mittens!

Adam Urggh, skin mittens! I think we should do a texture of the week off the back of that.

Ren I think so.

Adam I have an Anchor spreadable pot, that has ‘onion’ written on the side over the anchor logo in black biro, but it’s not onion inside, it’s lots of dice, sequins and buttons.

Ali Oh, that's quite textural in itself.

Ren I have a stapler. clicks stapler annoyingly

Adam What do you have Ali?

Ali I have a cello, but I won’t play it properly because it’s not in the spirit.

Adam Can you make some sounds on it though?

Ali Oh yeah, sure!

Ali Makes cello sounds

Ren Clicks stapler

AdamShakes onion box

Ren, Adam, Ali Texture, Texture, Texture of the week!

Ren That was brilliant, thank you. So, skin mittens. Does anyone have any other textures they would like to add to skin mittens?

Adam Mine is the Wood of Radnor, or some of the textures connect to the Wood of Radnor. You get these wonderfully complex vivid descriptions of intertwined branches:

“There were old bushes, and behind the green outer cover lay the growth and litter of one hundred years. Tough crooked bows, inches across, stemming too long,
pliant wire-like shoots, skeins of dead branches which snapped at the touch forming lances of wood to goad and score the flesh. And everywhere the fine black bark dust, with the bitter taste that burned throat and nostrils and was like fine sand in the eyes.”

That’s just a really exquisite piece of writing.

Ali They’re very sinister woods.

Ren I have another one from later where the party are helped by the Lady of the Lake and they’re wrapped in cloaks of ‘red muspel hair, woven from the beards of giants’. Giant beard hair cloaks!

Ali Mine is from when they’re in the mines. They’re trying to make their way through these mines with the assistance of two dwarves and they have to be helped to climb along this cliff and Susan has gone first and they only have one light source, so Colin is left alone.

"Colin had nothing to do but to avoid cramp and to watch the dwindling oblong of light and his sister’s foreshortened silhouette. And as he looked, he gradually became aware of an optical illusion. Being in total darkness himself, he could see nothing of the shaft except the small area lit by the lamp in Fenodyree’s hand; and as this drew further away his sense of perspective and distance was lost, so that he seemed to be looking at a picture floating in space, a moving cameo that shrank but did not recede. He was so fascinated by this phenomenon that he barely noticed the cold, or the strain of being wedged in one unalterable position.”

I just really like that bit because it serves no narrative purpose, it’s not scary, Colin’s not scared in that moment but I just find it very evocative of being in this very odd situation and what he can see. It’s so peculiar.

Adam The novel’s so convincingly rooted in the senses, in a really embodied way, or it’s kind of hard to explain because it’s both, embodied and abstract, you get a real sense of their bodies in the landscape but sometimes the perspective is more aligned with the landscape than it is with the children. It’s sometimes like you’re sensing the landscape through the children, and sometimes it’s like you’re sensing the children through the landscape.

There’s something very odd that goes on in terms of perspective and feeling, so sometimes it’s like in a dream, I guess, because dreams are like that. Sometimes you’re a bit out of body in a dream and sometimes you’re firmly rooted. They’re drifty, because sometimes you’re you and sometimes you’re a third person, it’s very indeterminate even as it’s still very vivid.

Ali I definitely think you’re right that there’s the sense through the whole book that the landscape is the really real thing, which is in fact true, it is a real landscape and they are not real characters. But the children feel less convincing. And Garner was very critical of this novel in the novels closer to when he had written it, and one of his criticisms was that he didn’t think the characters were convincing. But I think the way that he writes about the landscape is very evocative.

Ren They are remarkably stoical children, I think.

Adam I think in some ways that’s really interesting, it might not be wholly intentional, but it kind of makes it less anthroprocentic almost. You could totally write about this as ecological fiction, and there are some screeds against urbanisation in the novel, but there’s a real sense of the landscape being ancient and the thing that endures, and on some level the trials and tribulations of the human characters are very small in the scheme of things. And actually it’s the woods and the mines are more real, or have a greater gravity or depth to them. I think there’s a weird advantage to the characters being a bit thinly sketched, as maybe it makes you focus on the landscape even more.

Ren I think it’s partly what makes the whole section (that we’ll get to) with them in the mines so unnerving, because they could be so easily just be swallowed by the mines, these deep indifferent tunnels of stone, they’re not so important in the scheme of things. Which is an unusual perspective for a children’s book to take !

Adam I feel like there was an aspect of that to Moondial, too. And we’ve talked about how one of the things that’s changed with Young Adult writers past The Hunger Games and probably Harry Potter too is that they have these very strong-willed characters, and they’re very mission based. They have goals and things to overcome, not that that’s not here in this book, but the identities and the perspectives of these child characters are very clear. They know themselves and they know what they have to do, they’re fully formed. Whereas in these the 60s and 70s children’s books, they’re more nebulous.

Ali It feels like a more realistic way, it conjures the sense of being a child better for me, books like this where you’re in this bizarre situation that you don’t really understand and it keeps getting out of hand and you don’t really have that much agency. That feels like a feeling that is familiar from being a child, and in some ways from being an adult as well, whereas something like the Hunger Games it’s like, well, people’s lives aren’t really like that.

Adam They’re all so capable! But they are in Weirdstone as well, I suppose, but maybe there’s a greater sense of the absurd in older children’s books. The character’s have these plans and they keep going awry.

Ren Definitely not a power fantasy.

Adam Oh, no. So I suppose the basic plan is getting the stone back to the wizard.

Ren Right, yeah. Becasue Grimnir of the skin mittens takes the Weirdstone.

So the children run shouting for Cadellin, and find Fenodyree the dwarf, who’s hanging around Stormy Point. and brings them to Cadellin. There is a collective realisation that things have gone pretty badly wrong, and during that conversation it transpires that Selina Place is not just a batty local woman, but in fact Morrigan, the Third Bane of Logris, chief witch of the Morthbrood.

Adam She’s serious business.

Ren Yep. So Calledin and Fenodyree dismiss the children, saying that there’s really nothing they can do in at this point. And that’s the end of part one.

Adam It’s quite bleak, it really is like “Sorry, it’s the end of the world kids,”

Ali “Try and stay out of trouble.”

Ren So we start part two and It turns out that all is not quite lost, as Grimnir didn’t deliver the Weirdstone direct to Nastrond, but instead got caught up in a plan with Selina Place to gain power for themselves.

So Colin and Susan sneak over to Selina Place’s place, and sneak inside, and they’re hiding as Grimnir and Selina are begin to perform some kind of summoning ritual with the Weirdstone.

Ali do you want to read some more Latin for us?

Ali ‘“Demoriel, Carnefiel, Caspiel, Amenadiee!!” A flame hissed upwards, filling the room with ruby light. Shape-shifter opened the book and began to read. “Vos omnes it ministri odey et destructiones et seratores discorde …” “What’s she up to?” said Susan. “I don’t know, but it’s giving me gooseflesh.” “… eo quod est noce vos coniurase ideo vos conniro et deprecur …” “Colin, I …” “Sh! Keep still!” “… et odid fiat mier alve …” Shadows began to gather about the folds of velvet tapestry in the furthest corners of the room.’

Ren Excellently done, thank you. Sorry for foisting that on you!

Ali It was a bit wonky! Apparently the Latin in this book all comes from old books of spells that are in the British Library.

Adam I was about to say, it’s probably good that you intentionally mispronounced a little bit, Ali, because you didn’t want to cast the spell, so thank you.

Ali Quite.

Ren Yeah, so there’s some sinister chanting, she’s saying: “Come Haboryn, Come Haboryn, Come Haboryn”. And then, I’ll read this bit:

“The pillar was alive. It climbed from out the circle that Selina Place had so laboriously made, a column of oily smoke; and in the smoke strange shapes moved. Their forms were indistinct, but the children could see enough to wish themselves elsewhere. Even as they watched the climax came. Faster and faster the pillar whirled, and thicker and thicker the dense fumes grew, and the floor began to tremble, and the children’s heads were of a sudden full of mournful voices that reached them out of a great and terrible distance. Flecks of shadow, buzzing like flies, danced out of the tapestries and were sucked into the reeking spiral.”

This is a big spell! They’re trying to do something with the Firefrost, with the Weirdstone.

Adam You don't know what, but it’s bad!

Ren Susan manages to sneak forward and grab her bracelet before the completion of this ritual.

Adam Susan’s a little hero. I do want to stress how hardcore Susan is in this book!

Ren Yeah. So Colin and Susan grab the Weirdstone and run, pursued by the hound of the Morrigan: “It was like a bull-terrier; except it stood four feet high at the shoulder, and its ears, unlike the rest of the white body, were covered in coarse red hair. But what set it apart from all others was the fact that from pointed ears to curling lip, its head and muzzle were blank. There were no eyes.”

Got a scary eyeless dog.

They run into a cupboard, but it starts to move - it’s going downward, and it’s not a cupboard, but a lift, that’s taking them down into the mines!

Ali And thus begins the mine segment.

Adam This is a real survival horror video game moment, this! It’s like something you’d get in a Japanese Playstation 2 survival horror game, it’s brilliant!

Ren And the mine section is a significant portion of the book: they’re down there for four chapters, about 50 pages, and it’s very atmospheric, I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow of everything that happens in the mines, I do think it’s worth reading, I think people should read this book. It’s very compelling.

Adam Oh yeah, and this sequence in particular, it’s some of the most claustrophobic writing — there’s bits where you almost feel you can’t breathe reading it.

Ali So claustrophobic. So I did want to mention a couple of things while we’re here. So after the lift hey climb down a ladder from the entrance, and they’re like: “Oh, we need to get away from the entrance because we’ll be found” and they can see the ladder beginning to shake so they run away from it. That is mine mistake number one, significant mine mistake number one.

Ren Running away from the entrance?

Ali I don’t want to get too out of order, but remember that moment. The other thing I wanted to mention about this first chapter was the plank. The plank is the scariest bit of the novel, I think.

Ren Plank horror. Adam! Would you like to read some of the plank section.

Adam Oh yep, the plank. Have you gone on Ritichie’s Plank Experience?

Ali What’s Ritchie’s Plank Experience?

Adam It’s a sort of VR test-of-concept game presumably developed by Ritchie, where you go up in an elevator and then you walk on a plank on top of a skyscraper and step off the edge.

Ren I was thinking this was going to be a Suffolk local attraction.

Adam (Suffolk accent) “Oo, Ritchie’s plank experience, I’ve just got this plank set up —“

Adam and Ali But Suffolk’s very flat —

Ali We don’t have that kind of gradient.

Adam But it’s kind of amazing, it does give you that stomach-dropping feeling you get on roller coasters even though it’s just VR. I remember my stepson doing it and finding it very scary.

"The widest shaft they had yet come upon lay before them, and stretched across its gaping mouth was a narrow plank. This was wet, and partly rotten, and no more than three inches rested on the lip of the shaft at either end. “We’ll have to go back,” said Colin. “No: we must cross. The tunnel leads somewhere, or the plank wouldn’t be here.” And Susan stepped on to the plank. Colin watched his sister walk over the pit: he had never known her to be like this before.”

And then he talks about how brave she is and Colin walks out onto the plank after Susan’s encouragement.

“Colin started out. It was not too bad: the plank was firm, and he was prepared for a slight movement just over halfway. But even so, when it came it caught him unawares. He felt the plank shift: he teetered sideways, his arms flailing. Two swift shambling steps, the plank seemed to swing away from him, the lamplight whirled in an arch, he saw that his next step would miss the plank, the shaft yawned beneath him, and he leapt for his life.”

Ali It still upsets me!

Ren And then the horrible thing about this is that they’d crossed this plank because they’re trying to head upwards to intersect with the Edge and come out through one of the tunnels, but it keeps sloping downwards and they reach this little lake and they have to go back and cross the plank again.

Ali And the second time Colin crosses ok, and then Susan starts to go across and she gets midday and she stops in the middle because she wants to see how deep it is:

“I’m all right! I want to see how far down it goes.” And she turned the beam of her lamp into the shaft. She saw the wet rock, ribbed and gleaming like a gigantic windpipe, fall away beneath her and vanish into darkness far below, and … Susan screamed. The lamp dropped from her hand and crashed from wall to wall into the shaft’s throat. It was a terrible depth. She swayed, and fell forward, clutching the plank so violently that it began to quiver and grate against its anchorage. Susan knelt, staring into the hole, and whimpering with fear. “Sue! Sue, get up! What’s the matter? Sue!” “Eyes! Eyes looking at me! Down there in the darkness!”

Ren Shudder

Ali So then Colin has to go back on there as well and help her to the side. The whole thing’s just horrible.

Adam It works, I think, in a book so much better than it could in a film, just the stumbling awkward rhythms of the writing in this bit and the way it slows right down and forces you to stay with it for a horrible amount of time.

Ren I’d forgotten the description of the wet rock like a gleaming gigantic windpipe, that’s horrendous, amazing. I feel like if you read that as a kid that would be the bit you remembered. You’d be like “It’s that book about the plank! fuck!”

Adam A phobia of planks.

Ali I read it in my ‘20s and when I got to the chapter called ‘Plankshaft’ I was like: “Oh God, I remember this!” It did also put me off caving for life.

AdamOh yeah, yeah. In the horror podcast The Magnus Archives there’s an awful caving story where someone has to duck under into the water where a bit of the cave’s flooded, and it should just be a two second dive under, but the water goes on and goes on. And there’s a bit in this book that’s quite like that, but basically they think they’re being pursued.

Ren So they keep hearing footsteps and keep running away because they think it’s Grmnir and Selina. Until Susan is taken by a Svart, and when Colin runs after her, he finds her safe in the company of two dwarfs: Fenodyree, from before, and Durathor. And it turns out it was them who were following them all along.

Adam Dohhh.

Ren And the children were in fact making things much more difficult for themselves and for the dwarves than it needed to be.

Adam You are right, Ali, that this is one of the main themes of this book: ‘brave children make the situation worse.’

Ren So the dwarves sneak them through the cave of the Svartmoot, where the svart lords Arthog and Slinkveal are leading a meeting.

Durathor confronts the Svarts with ‘Hail, O eaters of toadstools! We are well met!’, which I particularly enjoyed, there’s some fighting, Durathor holds off the svarts as Fenodyree guides the children through a treacherous route to the exit. And they we have this proper cave assault course.

Adam It’s horrible! It’s really funny because Garner’s like: “Hah, you think you found that cave sequence claustrophobic, well…”

Ren They have to rock-climb, they have to leap, they have to squirm, they have to dive — it ends with a literal slide!

But one part that made me particularly go ‘wahh’ was when they have to swim on their backs through a tunnel that’s so low that: “in order for (Colin) to keep his lips above water he had to squash his nose against the rough stone of the ceiling, which made progress as painful as it was difficult”. That’s horrible.

And then they have to worm their way through this incredibly narrow tunnel, so I’ll read a bit of it:

“Both the children had the greatest difficulty in entering the tunnel. For the first yard or so it sloped downwards, and then turned uphill, not sharply, but enough to cause acute discomfort at the bend. Sand choked the entrance, though even when that was behind them the tunnel was so heavily silted that it was almost beyond the children to move at all. They lay full length, walls, floor, and roof fitting them like a second skin. Their heads were turned to one side, for in any other position the roof pressed their mouths into the sand and they could not breathe. The only way to advance was to pull with the fingertips and to push with the toes, since it was impossible to flex their legs at all, and any bending of the elbows threatened to jam the arms helplessly under the body.”

Whimper

Adam Urghhhhh.

Ali That’s so awful.

Ren I wouldn’t say I’m more claustrophobic than the average person, but I still found this section pretty unbearable!

Adam There were several bits where my courage would not have held out. The children really push on, but I’d just be like: “I’m going to stay here and starve, I guess! That’s the end of me!”

Ren “Oh well, guess I die!”

Ali This section is also preceeded by, at the end of the part where they’re fighting the goblins and the start of the properly horrible caving bit they find out that the lake where they turned back after they crossed the plank —

Adam Adam laughs sadistically

Ali — Was actually the exit, but it’s too late to turn back now. Which is really funny.

Adam So mean!

Ren They could have just paddled across it! Poor things. They do eventually, eventually, squirm out — it’s a little mud slide right at the end to get out of the caves.

Adam And you would have thought that Garner could have made that bit fun for them, at least, like in The Simpsons where Bart goes down the wacky slide before he gets got by Dracula in the Treehouse of Horror. But even this is really painful! One of the dwarves says there’s sand at the bottom, but then it’s like: "It was wet sand and hard.”

Ren The absolute ordeal of it.

Ali But it’s not over yet. It does make the whole rest of the book not feel as bad, though. Just because it’s not in mine.

Adam Yeah, like when they’re being set upon by hordes of goblins and monsters, it’s like, “Well, it’s not that bad compared to the mine.”

Ren At least it’s not a mine, perspective!

Ren Once out of the tunnels, they realise they can’t go to Fundindelve because the enemies are amassing, so they got to the farm. I love the image of the two dwarves wrapped in blankets by the fire, while Bess irons their rapidly-washed tunics. Actual hero, just washing these filthy tunics. Shout out to Bess.

Adam I like that the dwarves are both appreciative and a bit grumpy about being in the farmhouse as well, its quite endearing.

Ali One of the things I like about the book is this point where you get the contrast, because in most children’s fantasy the fantasy is kept well away from the adults, but Bess and Gowther do find out about it and pretty much take it in their stride.

And Gowther comes with them for the next section.

Ren Yep, Gowther comes along for the next bit. Selina Place comes knocking in the night, but she and her crew are kept out with magic that prevents them entering without being invited.

So they set off the next morning, plus Gowther, trying to dodge the people and crows that act as spies for the Morthbrood.

Adam There’s something quite awful about these people acting as spies because they’re seemingly regular folk who’s Gowther known for years from the village, one of them seems like a backpacker but is actually a warlock.

Ren It’s very creepy, I found. These seemingly ordinary people being spies for the Morthbrood.

One of the birds falls at their feet, Durathor recognises this small white-feathered arrow as that of the lios-alfar, the elves of light, who have been gone from the woods for two hundred years.

But unfortunately the morthbrood have called Rimthur to their aid, and the ice-giant’s breath, the fimbulwinter is set upon them. So they are beset by a fimbulwinter, which is a magical winter, so they get to the Wood of Radnor which was Adam’s texture earlier.

Adam I love the writing, it sounds like the most brambly wood ever. It’s really great, I often lament that I’m not very good at naming and identifying trees, it’s something I really try to work at but it doesn’t come easily to me, but I can picture the trees in this section pretty easily, which is nice.

Ali They’re a real obstacle, described as fighting against the children. It’s a very active landscape, resistant.

Ren They comes across a Mara. Ali would you like to read a description of the Mara?

Ali Oh yeah, I’ve actually tried to draw a Mara.

Adam Oh wow, Ren’s been making collages for each episode for Instagram so you could send it to them.

Ali Yep, I was thinking of putting it on Instagram.

"It bore some resemblance to a woman, an ill-proportioned woman, twenty feet high, and green. The long, thick- set trunk rested on massive legs with curving, bloated thighs. The arms were too short, muscular at the shoulders, but tapering to puny, indeterminate hands. The head was very small, elliptical, and scarcely broader than the neck on which it sat. There was no hair; the mouth was a shadowed line; the nose cut sharply down from the brow, between eyes that were no more than dark smears. It wore a single garment, a loose tunic that reached to the ground, and clung to the body in folds like wet linen. The flesh gleamed dully, and the tunic, of the same colour and texture, might have been of the same substance. A statue of polished malachite; but a statue that moved.”

Ren Yeah, troll women! Who’ve been called by the Morthbrood.

Adam Basically, all the level 60 monsters start coming out.

Ali It’s very clear that you’re not meant to initiate combat with the Mara, the Mara is a sneaking challenge.

Ren You just sneak by the Mara.

Ali The Fimbulwinter has come at this point so they’re in a snowstorm, and it’s all bitingly cold. You get this quite strange sense of space, they can’t see where they’re going, which also adds to the horror.

Ren The group find themselves on an island called the Isle of Angharad Goldenhand, the Lady of the Lake. And as she sleeps Susan has this dream that she’s being wrapped in these cloaks of giant beard hair.

But when she wakes up they find it wasn’t a dream, they are cloaked, and the Lady gave them these cloaks to survive the Fimbulwinter.

Fenodyree tells them that Angharad Goldenhand is the wife of one of the sleeping knights in Fundindelve, and that she helped them despite the fact that if their mission succeeds, her husband will be held in suspended sleep for longer than ever.

So yeah, nice one.

Ali I also wanted to mention the island itself. They’re surprised to find themselves on an island, they stumble onto it and realise that they’re in the middle of a lake somehow.

But it turns out there is, or was, a real floating island on this lake that moves around or used to move around but it was chained up by the council.

Ren Amazing. “Stop that!”

Ali I was a bit sceptical but I did find independent corroboration of this story, so there was a real moving island.

Ren That’s brilliant. They also get a bracelet from the island and the Lady, which is a special item that they can use later on.

Ali They deserve some loot.

Ren Selina Place, meanwhile, believes that the humans haven’t survived the cold of the Fimbulwinter, so they have a slight advantage but the group have to adopt the tactic of flopping flat to the ground whenever the birds pass overhead, so their cover isn’t blown.

Unfortunately, a local gobshite called Jim Trafford sees them doing this, and goes to have a big gossip about it in the pub, where one of the Morthbrood’s informer’s overhears. So they lose that advantage quite quickly.

But they do get a bonus in the form of a figure called Gaberlunzie who appears on an unearthly horse that can fit the whole group on its back, and he whisks them to the edge of the forest.

Adam I was quite confused by this bit.

Ali This bit is very much like: “The DM has run out of patience.”

Ren They’ve unlocked fast travel. And with that help it’s not long before they make it to the summit ridge at Shuttlingslow where Cadellin is set to appear. Except he doesn’t.

And instead the birds see them and start to attack, heading for Susan, but Durathor and Fenodyree hack them from the air until they retreat.

But now the morthbrood are streaming in from all sides, we’ve got svarts, we’ve got mara, we’ve got the morrigan’s blind hounds, they’re all seeking to encircle the group.

Adam It’s all gone proper Tolkien

Ren Susan is snatched by a Mara, but when it comes into contact with the bracelet that the lady of the lake gave her it begins shrinking: “Like a statue of butter in a furnace heat it writhed and wasted. Its contours melted into formlessness as it dwindled. No sound did it utter again, save a drawn out moan as movement finally ceased. And there on the moor-top stood a rough lump of rock.”

There’s a ferocious battle, basically, Susan throws the stone to Durathor, who’s attacked by the birds but he manages to escape and stagger to a pillar of stone and he lashes himself to it and he’s fighting valiantly until eventually he can fight no more.

There’s still no sign of Cadellin and in strides Grimnir, ready to claim his victory. For the first time, he speaks, giving the order to kill the rest of the group, and Susan realises that his voice is Cadellin’s. Grimnir gets the bracelet, but is stopped.

Adam And I did wonder at this point if it was going to be a bad ending, and Cadellin was evil all along, and all the characters are killed, and that’s the end.

Ren This is like less than 10 pages from the end!

Ali It’s like three!

Ren Grimnir snatches the bracelet, but at the last moment he is toppled by a double-edged sword to the back.

"The deep cowl slid from his face, and the madness was complete. It was the face of Cadellin twisted in pain, but nevertheless Cadellin; kind, noble, wise, his silver beard tucked inside the rank, green, marsh-smelling, monk-like habit of Grimnir the hooded one.”

And here, at last, is Cadellin himself, dropping on one knee beside Grimnir and lamenting for his brother. Grimnir lifts his fist and drops the Weirdstone into Cadellin’s palm before falling down dead. And Cadellin lifts the Firefrost and sends Selina Place to Ragnarok.

Adam, would you like to read the end of this:

Adam “As the hill slid down the boundless throat Cadellin lifted his right hand, and held Firefrost on high. Gowther stood firm. Colin and Susan clasped their arms about Cadellin’s waist, and Fenodyree grappled to him with his one good arm as much of the wizard’s robes as he could hold. “Drochs, Muroch, Esenaroth!”

A cone of light poured down from the stone, enclosing them in a blue haze. A starving wind, howling like wolves, was about them, yet the air they breathed was still. Slanting yellow eyes were seen dimly through the veil; hungry eyes. And there were other noises and other shapes that were better left unknown. The fury raged and beat against the subtle armour, but it was as nothing to the power of Cadellin Silverbrow with Firefrost in his hand.

And at last, at once, the darkness passed, and the blue light faded. Blinking in the sunlight of a brilliant sky, the survivors of the wrath of Nastrond looked out over fields of white; wind-smoothed, and as empty of life as a polar shore.”

I’m going to end it there, I don’t want to read the last lines of the book because I want people to read this book, it’s very good!

Ren Yeah, read this book! So that is The Weirdstone fo Brisingamen.

Ali I do like the way it just stops. There’s no “And the chuldren went back to the house.” There’s no comfort at the end of it, it’s just ended.

Adam You avoided nightmarish death and the end of the world, that’s good enough. The end. You live to fight another day children.

Ali And they do!

Ren There is a sequel, is it the same children?

Ali Yeah.

Adam Do they suffer more?

Ali I’d say they don’t suffer quite as much in the second one, but they do cause a lot of problems. I feel like this one stands on its own pretty well though, there is the third one as well that was written many many years later in a completely different style and isn’t for children.

Adam With Colin and Susan?

Ali Yes. Broadly.

Ren Any final thoughts?

Adam I mean, I’ll never go caving.

Ren I think that is the main takeaway of this novel. Never go in the caves, it’s not worth it, creepy kids.

Adam Seriously, if some local council needs some kind of: ‘Don’t go in the caves’ campaign to keep kids safe, they could do worse than issuing the middle chapters of this book to schools. The equivalent of those Quentin Blake train safety books.

Ren Illustrations of Colin and Susan twisted up like pretzels with sand in their airways. Absolutely horrifying.

So yeah, lot of plot, fair bit of horror! I enjoyed it.

Adam I did too, I'm really glad I read it.

Ren Thank you Ali, for coming back on the podcast, it’s been a pleasure.

Ali Thank you for having me.

Adam And if we do The Owl Service at some point, which I think we should do at some point.

Ali In my memory it’s not as scary, but it does have some sinister bits in it.

Adam Certainly the TV version gets mentioned a lot, things that Generation X remember scaring them as children, The Owl Service comes up a lot. It comes up in Folk Horror discussions, too.

Ali It’s pretty folk horror, I think

Ren coughs Urgh. Alright.

Adam I think you held up very well, Ren, considering you’ve not been wholly well.

Ren One of our several delays, was that I was laid up with a horrible lurgy for a week. So glad we managed to get here in the end and hopefully we’ll come back on a slightly more regular schedule.

Adam Oh yeah, there’s a book on children’s horror that’s being published by Bloomsbury in about a month, and I’ve got a chapter in it about The Demon Headmaster, there’s all sorts of interesting-looking chapters.

Ren Ali, do you want anyone to find you anywhere on the internet?

Ali laughs Well, I’ll put my picture of the Mara on instagram, so I’m Liminitch there.

Ren Do you have a sign off for us Adam?

Adam Don’t go into the caves, it’s not worth it!

Ali That’s the moral.

Ren Catch you next time, creepy kids.