Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) (9 page)

A few minutes later, when she went back to her camp between the sheds, the smells of woodsmoke and winter had gone. Perhaps she had been mistaken. And yet the thought of a fire, burning somewhere out of sight, intrigued her.

She found a stick of firewood and took it back to her room. Using her own tools she blunted the sharp edges, rounded the head and cut a deep gouge for the neck. She carved eyes that were closed and a thin mouth that smiled, adding two hands and crossed legs. She patterned the hair as flame. She returned this fire doll to the alley, throwing it to the far end, close to the grimy greenhouse glass.

She waited at the end of the alley for a while but the doll did not call back the fire: that scent of snow and woodsmoke had slipped away, out of the summer’s heat.

Someone
– an invisible someone. The whole conversation with Gaunt became very meaningful suddenly. He had referred to Tallis as ‘her grandfather’s girl’. He had echoed something that she had read in her grandfather’s letter in the book of legends:
I urge you to listen to them when they whisper
…

She walked slowly back to her room. She sat on the bed, her masks around her, the book on her lap. She peered at the book through the eyes of each mask. She felt most comfortable with the Hollower, her first mask and the crudest. How many masks would she make, she wondered? Perhaps there would be no end to them. Each time she went to the enclosure on Barrow Hill she came back with the idea for another mask. Perhaps she would be inspired to make them all her life.

She opened the book of folk-tales. She turned slowly through the pages, looking at the knights and heroes, the castles, the gorges and forests, the wild hunts. She lingered on the image of Gawain, his clothes like a Roman tunic, his helmet oddly skull-like and made of burnished bronze. She turned to the picture called The Riders to the Sea, which had been marked in pen with a large exclamation sign. It showed four knights on horseback riding hard, bent low over the withers of their mounts, cloaks streaming as they escaped a terrible, dark storm.

Eventually she turned to her grandfather’s letter. She felt strongly that it was time for her to read the words. It was seven years since it had been ‘given’ to her, four years after the old man’s death.

My dear Tallis

I’m an old man writing to you on a cold December night

She forced herself to read the most legible parts of her grandfather’s message to her, even though she was familiar with them already. She hesitated at

there is old memory in snow

And stared for a long time at

I sometimes think you might be trying to tell me your own infant’s stories, to make up for all the tales I’ve whispered to you
.

Frowning, she began to unravel the whole of the text, which she had ignored for all these years.

(v)

My dear Tallis: I’m an old man writing to you on a cold December night. I wonder if you will love the snow as much as I do? And regret as much the way it can imprison you. There is old memory in snow. You will find that out in due course, for I know where you come from, now. You are very noisy tonight. I never tire of hearing you. I sometimes think you might be trying to tell me your own infant’s stories, to make up for all the tales I’ve whispered to you
.

Your mother says you cannot understand a word. I think differently. White Mask; and Ash; and the Bone Forest; and the Ragged Tree. Do they mean anything to you? I’m sure they do. I’m sure as you read these words you are seeing images. One day you will understand completely
.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day. It will be your second yuletide, and it will be my last. I’ve known seventy Christmas nights. I can remember every one of them. I can remember goose stuffed with fruit; and partridges as fat as pigs; and hares the size of deer; and puddings that cracked oak tables. I wish you could have been there with us, in those lovely days, before this war. We are rationed now. We have one chicken and five sausages, and that is our yuletide fare, although Gaunt, who works for us, has hinted at eggs. For all of this poverty, I wish you were here now, aware and alert. I wish I could know you in days to come. It is agony, to an old man like me, to imagine how you will be just ten years on, a noisy child I expect, and mischievous, and imaginative. I expect you will look like your mother. I can almost see you. But long before you read this, long before you are grown up, I shall be in the shadowlands
.

Think kindly of me, Tallis. Someone has played a mean
and brutal trick upon us, sending one to the hidden places of the earth before they have sent awareness to the other. But there will always be a link between us, just as there will always be a link between Harry and myself, and perhaps you and Harry too. Harry was flying over Belgium. He was shot down. Everyone believes he is still alive, but for myself, I fear the worst. We have heard nothing of your brother for four months, now. If he does come back, I shall be gone, I fear; and if it is true, if the worst is true, then only you are left. Only you
.

How do I explain something to you that I hardly understand myself?

They first came to the edge of the wood four years ago. There were three of them. They tried to teach me but I was already too old to learn. I could not grasp their ways. But I learned the stories. I have kept this quiet, of course, although Gaunt suspects. He is a local man. In his own words: half this bedammed land is growin’ on the ashes of us Gaunts! That may be true, but
he
did not call them to the edge
.

Harry went away to war. So they lost him too. But now that you are here they have started to come again. They will tell you the other stories, all the stories. I know so few. But they will show you more than they have ever shown me, I’m sure of that. Who are they? Who knows! There is a man living on the other side of the wood who has made a study of them. He calls them mythagos. They are certainly strange, and I am sure Broken Boy is such a thing. They are perhaps from some mythological place, long forgotten. They are like ghosts. I expect you will see them before long. But do not think of them as ghosts. Do not think of them as spiritual forces. They are real. They come from
us.
Again, how and why I do not know with any real understanding. But I have given you a book
, this
book, whose pages I am completing with my letter to you,
and when you read it, when you read these fairy tales, these stories of brave knights and sinister castles, you are reading about
them,
only you will not recognize them at first
.

If it happens to you as it has happened to me, then everything in the wood that is strange is
you.
You are the beginning and the end of it, and there is a purpose which perhaps you will discover. I have lived in fear of what would happen to me. They were coming closer; I had begun to smell a terrible winter, far more terrible than this snowy Xmas eve. I was close to being taken to that forbidden place … and then you were born and the wood pulled back. I was abandoned. It is all around us, Tallis. Do not be deceived. Do not think of open land as open land, or a brick house as something permanent. The Shadow Wood is all around us, watching, biding its time. We bring alive ghosts, Tallis, and the ghosts huddle at the edge of vision. They are wise in ways that are a wisdom we all still share but have forgotten. But
the wood is us and we are the wood!
You will learn this. You will learn names. You will smell that ancient winter. And as you do so, you are treading an old and important pathway. I began to tread it first, until they abandoned me
.

Look at Broken Boy. I have made my own mark upon that ragged tree. When you have done the same it will mean that you are ready for the riders. Look at the picture in the book. Have you heard them yet? Have you heard the horses? Count the figures, and count the hooves. Did the artist know? All things are known, Tallis, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them
.

You are Tallis. You are Broken Boy’s Fancy. These are your names. All things have names, and some things more than one. The whisperers will teach you. The naming of the land is important. It conceals and contains great truths. Your own name has changed your life and I urge you to
listen to them, when they whisper. Above all, do not be afraid
.

Your loving grandfather, Owen
.

It was late evening. Tallis finished the letter and rubbed her eyes, weary with the effort of translating the old man’s scrawl. The words of his message were at once sinister and reassuring. Her own grandfather had somehow
known
of the strange life that his granddaughter would lead! He had implied, indeed, that for a while at least he had lived a similar life.

Tallis ran her fingers over the tightly packed words; once so meaningless, now she could recognize meaning in every shaky line.

It was as if she had been holding back. This letter, with its odd and enticing content, had been hers for seven years, but she had resisted reading it. Perhaps she had known that the contents would make no sense until certain of the patterns had begun to repeat for her. She would never have understood the letter when she had been five years old; nothing had
happened
to her when she had been five years old …

But now. Like her grandfather, she had heard horses, riders … Like her grandfather, she had seen figures at the edge of vision, and the three figures at the edge of the wood, the masked women … they had come for the old man first. He had known them; they had retired; they had come again.

And grandfather Owen, too, had experienced a strange winter. An ancient winter, he had called it, and Tallis was disturbed by that allusion.

For the first time in her short life it came home to her that something was being
done
to her. She was playing games, but there was more to it than that. Her games had a purpose. Everything, suddenly, seemed to have a purpose …

These ghosts – the mythagos – they had been here when her grandfather had been alive, watching him,
doing
things to him, whispering to him …

Do not be afraid
.

Now they had returned to watch Tallis herself. There was something in the thought that made her apprehensive, but she was at once calmed by the very presence of the letter.

Do not be afraid!

What could their purpose be? To show her the making of masks? Of dolls? Of stories? Of names?

But
why?

The wood is us and we are the wood
.

Everything in the wood that is strange is you. You are the beginning and the end of it
.

Then had
she
made the masked women? Out of her … out of her moondreams? Then how could they have known her grandfather? Had she also made the song, the twiggy figures, the riders, the cave … the smell of snow? Perhaps she had simply remembered her grandfather’s stories to her, whispered when she was a child, unconsciously remembered when she was grown up.

Or was it true what Gaunt had said, that
everyone
carried such ghosts in their heads? These symbolic things, fragments of a past, carried forward in the moonshadows at the back of the thinking mind …

Moonshadows.

Dreams.

Harry …

When you were born I was abandoned
.

Tallis stared at the last page of writing, then turned back to the picture of The Riders to the Sea. She counted the figures – four knights riding like the wind – then counted the hooves.

There were eighteen in the picture!

So that is what he had meant. Four riders but five
horses, the riderless animal shown only by its extended front legs as it raced in tow with the others.

All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them
.

She read these words again then closed the book and shut her eyes, leaning back against the pillow and letting the images and voices of her brief past flow through her mind …

As she drifted into sleep she was remembering Harry, leaning, his eyes glistening with tears …

I’ll see you again one day. I promise that with all my heart
.

In the middle of a summer night, an ancient winter began to blow. At first there was just a cold breeze, the crisp smell of snow; then there was the sound: a storm raging. Then the feel, an icy touch on her face, a snowflake blown from a time ten thousand years lost, eternally forgotten. The flakes came through from the other world like frozen petals, instantly destroyed by the humid heat of the August night.

Tallis watched them without moving. She was on her knees between the brick sheds, her garden camp, called there by a voice from her dreams. The fire doll was buried in the ground before her. She was quite calm. The wind from that icy hell gusted into the still summer and caught her hair, made her eyes water. She watched the thin line of grey, storm grey, a vertical slash in the dark air before her, half her standing height. From this unguarded gate came the sound of people, the wailing of a child, the nervous whinny of a horse. And the smell of smoke, a fire burning to keep the warmth in the bones of those who waited.

Darkness; except for that strip of pale winter, a thread of the past hovering before her wide, unfrightened eyes.

The wind whispered, and on that wind came the hint of a voice.

‘Who’s there?’ Tallis called, and at once there was confusion beyond the gate. A torch flared – Tallis could see its brilliant yellow flicker – and someone came close to the gate and peered through. Tallis almost believed that she could see the gleam of firelight in the eye that watched her. The horse, several horses, became restless. And then a drum began to beat, a rapid, frightened rhythm.

The human shape in the winter world shouted. The words were like nightmare speech, familiar yet meaningless.

‘I don’t understand!’ Tallis called back. ‘Are you one of the whisperers? Do you know who
I
am?’