Puss in Boots The Green Roads

1999 was a fairly empty year for DWJ fans, but we weren't left completely bereft. Scholastic published DWJ's retelling of Puss in Boots in their new series of fairy stories, aimed at younger children: "A story to read or tell for just £1".

At 88 pages, Puss in Boots is pretty good value for a pound, even if the print size is medium-large to suit kids. The lovely, rich cover is by fantasy and SF artist Fangorn, who was DWJ's own choice, and is bright and cheerful, yet stylish. Puss has got a knowing, adult look, which will probably pass for plain mischievous with children. There are plenty of illustrations inside as well, including strips running across both top and bottom of the pages. At first I found them a bit intrusive, then I reminded myself that I am not the target audience for this book. It's surprising how one little fairy tale can fill a book, even if it is larger print size for smaller children, and, of course, the writing is as elegant and absorbing as any of DWJ's books.

Even for a jaded adult, there can be surprises in a kid's book. I knew the elephant and mouse episode in Wilkins' Teeth came from a fairy tale, but I couldn't summon up from the depths of the past the memory of which fairy story it was. So, the dénouement at the end of Puss in Boots actually took me by surprise (sad, isn't it?)

DWJ is part of a distinguished line-up in Scholastic's series: amongst others, Alan Garner did Grey Wolf, Prince Jack and the Firebird, Philip Pullman wrote Mossycoat and K M Peyton wrote The Pied Piper.

Since I like every single one of Diana Wynne Jones's books, it is very difficult to decide if I have a favourite. Her books are so different from each other that it is tricky to compare them. I like them all for different reasons. Her adult ones have an entertaining element of sex and gore that have to be excluded from children's books; I think Hexwood is a magnificent achievement which left me in awe at the way the multiple strands tied up so cleverly and smoothly, and I will always feel a sickly-sweet fondness for the first DWJ I read, Charmed Life.

But, on balance and if forced at gun-point to make a choice, I think my favourite (at least so far) is The Crown of Dalemark.

For those who don't know the book, this is the fourth in the Dalemark series. While the others in the series - The Spellcoats, Drowned Ammet and Cart and Cwidder - can easily be read as stand-alones, The Crown of Dalemark is best appreciated if you have already read the others. Characters from all three earlier books appear, and it is in their development and changed ambitions that some of the deepest interest of the book lies.

So, you think you know some of the characters already, but you're in for a surprise. You would think that Keril, having lost one son to an unjust hanging, would be the last person to ruthlessly execute a youngster. But somewhere along the line he's lost the compassion and humanity that appeared in Cart and Cwidder. Perhaps it was that very loss that hardened his heart and made him willing to be brutal as others are in defence of what he has left. And it seems that it's not just his remaining family that he wants to protect to the death: it's as much his position and power, or at the very least the political status quo from which he, as an earl, benefits.

Navis changes for the better. From a rather weak and ineffectual man - although he did put the boot into the brother who came to arrest him - he has become efficient, managing, commanding, and almost as ruthless as Keril in his own way. But Mitt has come to respect and rely upon Navis and turns to him (albeit sometimes reluctantly), so you feel Navis can't be quite as bad or cold-blooded as Keril.

Hildy was a shock. Towards the end of Drowned Ammet she had become sympathetic and understanding, and I felt that she was someone with whom Mitt would remain friends.

I remember asking DWJ about the way some of the characters had developed, and her reply was that they behave the way their own natures force them to behave. They truly take on a life of their own.

As well as the revealing interplay between the characters, I liked the way in which past and future twine around each other. The use of twin time-tracks is a neat trick which helps to establish people's agendas. Before we know who they are, we know some of what King Amil does, and why, and that the Duke of Kernsborough was terrifyingly ruthless. You know they're going to be important, even if at that stage they are hundreds of years in the past. I enjoyed the way that magic popped up unexpectedly in the scientific, technologically-advanced future.

And since I love a wander in the countryside, I also particularly enjoyed the main setting of the book, along the green roads.

So, my ears pricked up when a pagan friend was discussing a recent holiday where he had explored "the green ways" in Wales. What was this? Something related to DWJ? The link is perhaps a little tenuous, but the story of the green ways is fascinating in itself, and there are some parallels with Dalemark's green roads.

Criss-crossing Wales and England, if not the whole of Britain, there is apparently a network of ancient trackways, known collectively as Green Ways. In Wales such a path is often called a Sarn Helen, a road of Helen. On Ordnance Survey maps, particularly in South West Wales, you can see the name Sarn Helen in titchy gothic script next to some paths.

These tracks link prehistoric tumuli, burial mounds, hillforts and so on, and since so many later settlements were built on top of these places, they also connect numbers of medieval castles, especially the Marcher castles in the Welsh borders. But most significantly, they radiate from castles and places which feature in the Mabinogion, the Welsh myth stories. Oxford and Caerleon are just a couple of the distant historic centres linked by old paths.

Many of the tracks have been identified as ley lines (whatever they may turn out to be). But since they tend to be long straight stretches, with only a little meandering, they are usually considered to be Roman roads. My pagan expert John pointed out that before the Romans ever reached Britain, Celtic peoples did occasionally roam around in chariots, for which they would undoubtedly have preferred straightish, paved roads, and that there is in fact evidence of older paving under several Roman roads around the country.

Why is an old track called a Sarn Helen? The usual explanation is that they are named for the Welsh princess of the Dark Ages, Helen. She married the Roman Magnus Maximus, known in the Welsh stories as Macsen Wledig, after he had a dream about her (perhaps while on an old road?), and who later went off to Rome to become Emperor. At some point, Helen became known as "Helen of the Roads."

But, John says perhaps there is another, even more fascinating story behind the ancient paths. Even before the Celts took over and pushed the ancient Britons into the far corners of the island, Britain had a goddess called Elen, who was known, spookily enough, as Elen of the Green Ways! Picture shows a marker stone (way stone?) on the Sarn Helen near Fishguard, South Wales.

Elen was associated with reindeer, which, John says, made the first tracks across the landscape, tracks which people would later follow. Tundra-dwelling reindeer died out in Britain not long after the end of the last Ice Age when the climate warmed up. So if there is any sort of link here in folk memory, we are talking about something very ancient indeed. Elen is often seen with horns, and apparently reindeer are the only deer where the females have antlers. Elen is also the word for reindeer in Bulgarian.

The deer theme continues. Some of the Sarn Helen tracks are associated with the Wild Hunt, led by the Horned God (remember that wonderfully weird episode of Earth's dark child in Dogsbody when Sirius can't stop himself joining in the wild hunt?) Also, think of the fun the children, griffins and geese had playing the Wild Hunt in Dark Lord of Derkholm. Of course, in The Crown of Dalemark the green roads were made by Hern and watched over by Duck, and I cannot somehow envisage "the Horned Duck" or serious Hern playing at the Wild Hunt.

There have been reports of people experiencing other-worldly visions along these old tracks, and on Halloween night, many of the Sarn Helen roads are linked with the souls of the dead, walking the paths on their own special night.

Incidentally, the original horns carried in the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance are reindeer antlers, and have been dated to the Neolithic, several thousand years BC. The originals are held in the church at Abbot's Bromley, in Staffordshire, and the horns carried by the dancers today are much later copies. For those who don't know, the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance is unique in Britain. It appears at first glance to be just another Morris Dance, but although it has some of the traditional Morris trappings, it is actually quite different. The dancers carry antlers which they clash and weave around each other, and they follow a unusual, spiralling dance pattern, different from other Morris dances.

Back to Elen of the Green Ways. The name of the town of Newlyn in Cornwall is derived from her, and it is from Newlyn that sea level in Britain is measured by the Ordance Survey. When you see that such and such a place is so many feet above sea level, it is against the benchmark of Newlyn that it is surveyed. So even after thousands of years, Elen still oversees the whole land.

(The druidic symbol Awen, which means paths of knowledge and represents three paths radiating out, apparently looks something like a sparrow's foot. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the Ordnance Survey arrow mark which can be spotted all round the country on their signs.)

Elen's roads, covering and overseeing the land, are very similar to The Crown of Dalemark's green roads. Mitt and company take to the green roads because they are the Royal Roads, leading to the royal city. But they also happen to be the quickest route to their destinations, which like the old roads themselves, are usually ancient and held in some degree of awe: the ruins of Kernsburgh, the One's chapel at the law school, even the deserted Shield of Oreth.

It is while asleep on the green roads that Mitt has his vision of the whole land, seeing "the green roads winding away from the camp . . . snaking among the mountains, linking place to place." In his dream he can follow people along their paths, and sees the present, the past and the future. In the light of his own destiny, his vision is highly prophetic. He himself will travel the length and breadth of the country in the future, overseeing the land and its people, and it is a far longer future than he could have realised.

I always thought it was a shame that Dalemark's green roads disappear under railway tracks. But perhaps this is the price of progress, or at least of peace, prosperity and stability for the country. And perhaps their original spirit is not gone, just transformed.

Like Helen's roads, named after an almost-forgotten goddess, Dalemark's green roads are also known as the paths of the Undying. As Mitt saw in his dream: "The Undying went walking on, taking the roads through time, and history went with them, ignoring them, forgetting the Undying were making history."

So even though lost half in history and half in myth, the Undying continue to influence Dalemark through the paths they created and watched over. Some would think this is what Elen of the Green Ways continues to do in Britain.

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