Let me tell you how I got lost.

I used to live in the regular world, in a house full of comforts - of baths and cushions and hot toast with marmalade. Now I am reduced to crawling on all fours within an endless spiral of brown and green. I’m looking for my cat. I hear him calling sometimes, but he always seems to be getting farther away from me. I won’t give up on him.

This is all the Green Man’s doing.

The Green Man used to hide at the bottom of the garden. I knew he was there - I could see him from my window, way down at the end of the path prickling around amongst the gorse bushes. And sometimes, at night, I swear I could see his shining pinprick eyes staring back up at me. I felt somehow he was waiting for me. And I knew why.

My Dad met the Green Man once when he was a boy. He said he threw chestnuts at him from the top of a tree. He asked the Green Man why, and the Green Man said “Because I can, Christopher.” But my Dad’s name isn’t Christopher, and he told the Green Man so. To which the Green Man replied, “my apologies… Christoper,” and then laughed a strangled, leafy laugh. And my Dad said “But why do you keep calling me Christopher when my name isn’t Christopher?” And the Green Man said, “Because it is the best name. A strong name. Who wouldn’t want to be called Christopher?” And my Dad said “Me. Because my name is Edwin.” And the Green Man said, “What a stupid name. Edwin! You should change it to Christopher immediately.” So my Dad threw a chestnut back at him with all his strength and it struck his nose with a crack and the Green Man screamed, “A curse upon you and all your kin!” - and then vanished.

Mum always laughed at Dad’s story - said he was probably just remembering things wrong. And it was so long ago I think even Dad wasn’t sure any more. But Mum eventually found out for herself.

The back garden path was overgrown when we first moved into our new house, and Mum was obsessed with the idea of clearing it - all the way from the top steps, past the crumbling leaf block wall, down past the main lawn and beyond the gorse and broom that smothered the path at its farthest end. It took her months just to make it to the lower level. Sometimes I helped - which is to say, I kept her company and told her stories while she tussled and hacked and said bad words at the wrack and tangle that strangled the garden path in front of her.

Then one day she moved a large rock and found a pair of garden shears half buried in the dirt beneath. They were old and filthy but sturdy in her hands. Mum cleaned off the worst of the dirt and hefted them upward and snapped them shut with a sharp and satisfying “shank”. “They must’ve been left by the previous owners,” she said, turning them over in her hands. They were impressive - bigger and stronger than the ones Mum had been using. The blades were tarnished but mostly free of rust, and the wooden handles were smooth and whole. “What’s that?” I said, noticing something on the underside of one of the handles. Mum turned them over - a logo, a name, carved into the wood in flowing cursive: “Mayberry.”

“Well, let’s give them a try!” she said.

She went immediately to the massive thicket of gorse at the end of the path - a tangled clot of decades-old furze that had gnarled itself into a clutter of browned and swirling roots as wide as they were tall and as thick as ropes and as stubborn as time. Mum, however, was undaunted, and set about the job with abandon. Branch and root snapped and sprang in all directions, scatter-bouncing around her feet as she went. “They’re cutting through it like butter,” she said with amazement. “This will take no time!” And she was right. You could see the difference right away. It was almost as if the sky was getting brighter with each snap of the blades. I laughed and cheered her on, and was about to ask to take a turn myself when at once the snapping stopped and I saw Mum struggling with the shears as if they’d somehow become stuck. “What on earth…” she said, and gave the shears a tug, but the gorse seemed to tug back at her shears in kind. Mum tugged one more time with all her strength, but the gorse yanked her back again, so hard this time that Mum’s arms were swallowed whole by the brambles, all the way up to her shoulders.

And that’s when I thought I saw him for the first time, right there within the tangle: a jumble of greenery in the shape of a face, with two eyes - deep and pulsing circles of green upon green - and a smile, toothless but sharp as knives all the same, and out of which roots and vines seemed to be growing even as I stood watching.

“Mum!” I shouted, reaching to help her. “It’s okay,” Mum replied, “I can get out,” and eventually she succeeded. Her arms were covered in scrapes and cuts, some of them deep and scored with ribbons of blood. “Come on,” she said, “I better get this cleaned up.” “But the shears…” I replied, turning back toward the hedge, but she grabbed me firmly by the elbow and pulled me back. “It’s okay,” she insisted, “leave them.” And we did.

I know she saw the Green Man too. And I know she recognized him. But she won’t talk about it, and she never went down to the end of the path again. She even made me promise I wouldn’t go there either - and I agreed.

Unfortunately, the cat had his own ideas.

I saw it all happen. I heard him first. It was about 4 in the afternoon and the sky was already darkening and I was in my room having some tea when I heard his wail, long and fraught, the kind of caterwauling that usually precedes a fight. I looked out the window and saw him right away, standing in front of the hedge at the end of the path. He wasn’t moving, and it was clear that every muscle and sinew in his body was drawn tight. And then it seemed as if the hedge parted somehow in the middle, and I watched as a hole appeared directly in front of him. “No!” I screamed uselessly from behind my closed window… but the cat stepped into the hole in the hedge all the same.

I ran downstairs and out the back door and down the path, leaping the steps that separated each level, and fell at last to my hands and knees in front of the nearly-vanished hole. “Let him out!” I screamed as the hole finally vanished. I pulled at the gorse to try and re-open the hole, but only succeeded in pricking my hands on the vines. I stood and picked up a stone and threw it foolishly into the hedge. “Why do you want my cat? Let him go!”

And that’s when I saw him again. He grew, bit by bit from the gorse in front of me, a profane and demoniac tapestry of root and thorn in the shape of a bearded face.

“Don’t bother me boy,” the face said. “I want my cat back,” I replied. “He came in of his own free will,” the Green Man replied, “I did not force him.” I swallowed. “So,” I said, still catching my breath, “you’re saying he can leave whenever he likes?” The Green Man laughed, “I suppose. But do not get your hopes up.” “Why?” I said, stepping closer. “Because few ever wish to leave once they get to know me. We live well deep in the brack. Leaf and vine provide for all who seek solace here.” “I seek only my cat,” I said, standing defiant. The Green Man smiled. “There is only one way in,” he said, his voice deepening. “And what is that?” I replied. “You must give me my name.” I took a step back. “Your name?” I shook my head. “Did the cat give you your name?” The Green Man laughed, a rhythmic and baleful rasp of twisting flora. “Don’t be foolish, lad. He’s just a cat.” I thought for a moment. “But what if you don’t like your name? How am I to know what‘s a good name for you and what isn’t?” For all that he had no body I could see, the Green Man seemed to shrug. “My name is my story and I am my name, in every way it is all the same.”

I took another step back and closed my eyes. I thought about the path and the twisted gorse that seemed to swallow it. I thought about Mum and the cuts that striped her arms and the shears that started it all. And I thought about my Dad as a boy, and about the tree and the chestnuts…

And then I opened my eyes.

“Christopher Mayberry Cat-trapper,” I declared. The Green Man’s eyes widened.

And then he grinned. And then he laughed - a pounding, roughshod laugh that thundered my chest and flustered my bones. And his mouth got wider and wider and the vines that had knit his face together spun a vortex of greenery that opened slowly, slowly until a hole was formed just big enough to crawl into. I bent to look inside and saw a tunnel, green-upon-brown-upon-black, twisting deep and far into the gorse.

And then I heard it, far away but somehow within reach - my cat, wailing as if scared, as if lost. I dropped to my knees and crawled inside. The opening closed behind me with an innocuous shuffle of root and vine.

“Green Man,” I called out, but shook my head and tried again - “Christopher!” But no response came. Then I heard my cat call out again, only much fainter than before. So I started to crawl. And crawl.

And crawl.

And so I have done for hours now - perhaps days. The tunnel seems endless, forking only rarely as if to give me a sense of autonomy I surely don’t have. And always at those junctures the cat will call, and his cry will guide me this time left, this time right.

The light never changes here except for a vague feathering between musty greens and browns - nothing to help me truly decipher the minutes from the hours. Only my hunger and my thirst betray the true passing of time. But it’s then that I know that the Green Man is still with me, and that I am in all likelihood just caught up in a game of his own making that I can never win. Because when I’m thirsty, a slow rain seems to fall and filter through the foliage to water me. And when I’m hungry, as if conjured by my own thought, I find laying in the middle of the path ahead… a small pile of chestnuts.

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