Lavondyss

by Robert Holdstock

  More exciting, more intriguing to her, were the three journey masks which she was inspired to carve. Falkenna had a second name: the flight of a bird into an unknown region. She disliked carrion birds, but was fascinated by the small hawks which preyed above the grass verges of the country roads. So Falkenna was painted in such a way as to suggest a hawk.

  Then there was the Silvering. Patterned with the dead features of a fish, painted in coloured circles, this mask had a quieter name, a name associated with an unconscious image: the movement of a salmon into the rivers of an unknown region.

  Finally there was Cunhaval: the running of a hunting dog through the forest tracks of an unknown region. She used snips of fur from the family dog to fringe the elder wood.

  She had made seven masks and ten dolls; she had invented several stories and named most of the fields, streams and woods around the farm. She had her hideouts, and an association with the ghosts that hovered at their edges. She was happy. She was still very anxious to return to the ruins of Oak Lodge, but the field between the wood and her farm, and the stream that bordered it, still defied her efforts to discover their secret names.

  But all of this was a game to her, a part of growing up, and whilst she approached the game with the utmost seriousness, she had never given a thought to the consequences of what she was doing … or of what was being done to her.

  All that changed shortly before her twelfth birthday, an event, an encounter, which disturbed her deeply.

  On a bright and stiflingly hot July morning, she smelled woodsmoke as she walked through her garden. Woodsmoke, and something else. She smelled winter. It was a scent so familiar it was unmistakable, and she followed the trace to the narrow alley between the brick machine sheds, where she had her garden camp. She had not used this camp for a while and the alley was gloomy and choked with nettles. At its far end it was blocked by the filthy glass of one of the greenhouses that backed on to the sheds.

  She was about to force her away along the passage when Mr Gaunt appeared in the garden, coming from one of the orchards. He stopped and suspiciously sniffed the air.

  ‘Have you been playing with fire, young madam?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘No,’ Tallis said. ‘Not at all.’

  He came right up to her, his brown overalls heavy with the smell of freshly dug earth. He wore these overalls in all weathers and must have been roasting in them on a hot day like today. His forearms were bare and burned brown, covered with a thick down of white hair. His face was very lean – he was well named – but flushed with bright red blood-vessels that seemed to trace a path to his thin hairline. Great beads of sweat rolled across the craggy contours of his face; but his eyes sparkled, a mixture of kindness and mischief.

  Tallis stared up at the tall man. Gaunt turned his grey eyes upon her. ‘I smell woodsmoke. What have you been up to?’

  His accent was a rich, almost incomprehensible country sound, which Tallis had to listen to quite carefully. She herself spoke ‘very well’, which is to say she took elocution lessons at school to lose the rough, rustic corners of her speech.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, then elaborately repeated, ‘Nuth’n!’

  Gaunt looked along the nettle-way between the buildings. Tallis felt her face flush. She didn’t want the gardener going down there. The dark alley was her secret place and in some way, after the brief and disorientating experience of a few moments before, it belonged to her even more.

  It was with relief, then, that she watched Gaunt turn away from the alley. ‘I can smell burning. Someone’s burning something.’

  ‘Not me,’ Tallis said.

  The gardener drew a filthy rag from his pocket and mopped his face, squinting up into the sun and drying the creases of his neck.

  ‘It’s a hot day all right. I do believe I shall have some cider.’ He looked down at the girl. ‘Come and have some cider, young madam.’

  ‘I’m not allowed.’

  The man smiled, ‘’m allowun un,’ he said softly.

  He led the way to the row of wooden sheds at the far side of the garden where a rickety bench leaned against them in the shade. Tallis followed him into the cool apple shed and past the racks of rotting apples. She liked the smell here. It was damp and mouldy, but tinged with a fruity odour. The apples were brown and shrivelled and covered with a fleecy mould. Water dripped somewhere, a tap not turned off tightly enough. Rusting fragments of old farm equipment were scattered around the walls, mostly swathed in lacy cobwebs. Light broke into the sheds through splits and cracks in the ancient slatted roof.

  At the far end of the shed, in the light-tinged gloom, was a tall barrel, covered by a heavy stone lid. China flagons lined the walls. Tallis had often been here, but had never seen inside the barrel. Gaunt slid the stone lid aside and peered at the contents. Then he looked at Tallis with a smile. ‘This looks like good cider. Try some?’

  ‘All right,’ she said, and the man chuckled.

  ‘Got a good fermentation going,’ he murmured, then reached in and drew out an enormous dead rat. Liquid drained from its fur as he swung it before the girl’s horrified eyes. ‘Him’ll rot right down soon. Give extra taste. But the cider’ll be drinkable by now. Now, young Tallis, how much would you like?’

  She couldn’t speak. The black monster dangled from his fingers and he dropped it back with a splash, the age-old tease repeated with great success. Tallis shook her head. Gaunt chuckled again.

  She couldn’t believe it was really cider in the barrel. It was almost certainly rainwater and the rat was just one of Gaunt’s many victims. But she couldn’t be sure … she couldn’t absolutely convince herself. So when he filled a pewter mug from one of the china flagons she refused that too, backing out of the apple shed.

  Gaunt looked puzzled. ‘Good cider, young Tallis. Nothing wrong with it at all. Rat’s all dissolved away nicely.’ He peered into the mug. ‘Just a couple of teeth, one of its feet, but that’s all right. Pick those out, no trouble.’

  ‘Nothing for me, thank you.’

  ‘Please ’nself.’

  They sat outside the woodshed, in the shade, watching the wide garden, the shadow of clouds. Gaunt drained his pewter tankard and smacked his lips. Tallis kicked at the shed below the bench, trying to think of something to say, wondering if she should risk asking about the vanished house in the wood. Gaunt knew about it, but she had never dared broach the subject. Something, some fear, held her back.

  She was suddenly aware that he was looking at her. She glanced up and frowned. His stare was intense, searching, and she thought he was about to quiz her further about the woodsmoke. But he said, ‘You ever seen a ghost?’

  Tallis tried to hide the sudden alarm she felt; she watched the old man carefully, her mind racing; what should she say? Finally she shook her head.

  Gaunt didn’t seem satisfied. ‘Not down by Stretley Stones?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not down by Shadox Wood?’

  ‘No …’ she lied.

  ‘I seen you playing by the meadow …’ he leaned close and whispered, ‘I heard how you went to find the old house in the Shadox …’ Straightening up: ‘And you’re telling me you an’t ever seen a ghost? Don’t believe ’n.’

  ‘An’t no such ’n things as ghosts,’ Tallis mimicked in the strong Gloucestershire dialect. ‘What’n seen bin rayle.’

  ‘Don’t you make fun of me, young Tallis.’

  Tallis couldn’t help smiling. ‘What I saw was real,’ she repeated. ‘No ghosts, just shadows.’

  Gaunt chuckled, then nodded. ‘What else to see in Shadox Wood than shadows?’

  ‘Why do your call it “Shadox Wood”? It’s Ryhope Wood …’

  ‘It’s called a thousand names,’ Gaunt said bluntly. He waved his hand around, then banged the bench. ‘This was all Shadox Wood once. Even this, where we’re sitting. It was once the wood. This seat, this garden, this shed, that damned house … all made from Shadox Tree.’ He looked down at Tallis, thoughtful. ‘It’
s the old name for the whole area, you should know that. Not just the village but the whole land. Shadow Wood. Been called that for centuries. But not shadows like sun shadows, more like …’

  When he had hesitated for a few seconds, Tallis ventured, ‘Moonshadows?’

  ‘Aye,’ said the man softly. ‘More like that. Shadows in the corner of the eye. Shadows that creep out of the dreams of sleeping folk, folk like you and me; people who live on the land.’

  ‘Moondreams,’ Tallis whispered, and at once, without her bidding, a mask formed in her mind’s eye, an odd mask, an eerie picture that she thought should be carved from … should be carved from …

  Before the species of wood which would be appropriate for the mask could come to mind, Gaunt had interrupted the moment of creation.

  ‘So you seen real things, eh? Down by the Shadox.’

  ‘I’ve seen hooded figures –’

  She was instantly aware of Gaunt’s startled reaction, but she chose to ignore it. She went on, ‘There are three of them. Women. They keep to the hedgerows, the undergrowth. And I’ve seen other things; men with twigs in their hair, and animals that look like pigs, but are too tall and have black hides. I’ve heard singing, I’ve felt wind on windless days, and I’ve seen tall trees carved into horrible faces.’ She looked up at Gaunt, who was staring fixedly ahead, into the garden. ‘And I’ve felt snow in the middle of summer, and heard bees in the middle of winter –’

  This last was a lie; just this. She waited for a response, but Gaunt was quite still.

  ‘Sometimes I’ve heard horses,’ she said; well, she had imagined horses, just once, about a week ago. ‘Knights on horseback, riding on the other side of the hedges. That’s about all. I keep hoping to find out something about Harry.’

  Gaunt did rise to the last, pointed little statement. He said, ‘You ever heard the growlers?’

  ‘Growlers? No.’

  ‘Roaring? Like bulls?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A man screaming?’

  ‘No screaming. Not man, not woman, not child. Not laughing. Just singing.’

  ‘People see all kinds of things out beside the Shadox,’ Gaunt said after a while. ‘And by Stretley Stones. By the stream. All the trees there link up with the Shadox …’

  ‘If they’re ghosts,’ Tallis ventured, ‘whose ghosts are they?’

  Gaunt said nothing. His arms were folded, the empty tankard held in his right hand. He was staring vaguely across the garden to the distant meadows.

  Tallis said, ‘Have you ever been to the old house? The trees have grown right through it. People live there.’

  After a moment Gaunt said, ‘Nothing lives there. That old house is dead and gone.’

  ‘But Granddad visited the man who owned it …’ Gaunt twitched but remained silent. Tallis went on, ‘And Harry visited the place. That’s where he went the night he disappeared …’

  Gaunt slowly turned to look at her, watery eyes narrowed, expression one of alarm, then suspicion. ‘You really been to Oak Lodge?’

  ‘Yes. Once …’

  ‘You see the writing?’

  She shook her head. Gaunt murmured, ‘The man who lived there wrote things down. That’s why your granddad went to visit. He wrote things down, but no one believed what he wrote …’

  ‘About the ghosts?’

  ‘About the ghosts. About the Shadox. They say the word “shadox” is as old as the first folk who walked up the rivers to settle here. So our village has the oldest name in England. It’s no wonder people see ghosts around. The man at Oak Lodge, he called them something else …’

  Tallis remembered the odd word from what little of her grandfather’s letter she had bothered to read. ‘Mythagos …’

  Again, Gaunt was startled, but all he said was, ‘They come from dreams. From shadows, moonshadows. That’s what you said. You were right. He wrote about them. I didn’t understand what your grandfather was talking about. Things from the unconscious. Symbolic things. Ghosts that we all carry. Ghosts that can be brought alive by trees …’

  ‘People are living in the house,’ Tallis said again, quietly. ‘I saw their statues. I saw their fires. I dreamed about them …’

  Abruptly, Gaunt turned his tankard upside down so that the dregs dripped on to the lawn. He rose to his feet and disappeared into the apple shed again. When he emerged he was buttoning up his brown overalls. ‘Cider needed topping up,’ he said, and Tallis grimaced with disgust, causing the old man some amusement. He sat down again, folded his arms and leaned back against the shed, his eyes narrowed. His whole attitude changed suddenly; Tallis could feel both the awkwardness in him, and the menace.

  In a low voice he said, ‘I seen you making dolls, young Tallis. Wooden things. I seen you carving them …’

  He seemed to be accusing her of something terrible and this confused her, silencing her for a few moments as she watched the far side of the garden and thought what to say.

  ‘I like making dolls,’ she murmured after a while. She looked up at the solemn face of the gardener. ‘I like making masks too. I make them out of bark.’

  ‘Do you indeed,’ Gaunt said. ‘Well, I know what they’re for. Don’t think I don’t.’

  ‘What are they for?’ she muttered irritably, still looking away from him to where the family’s dog prowled by the far brick wall.

  He ignored the sullen question, asking instead, ‘Who showed you how to carve? Who showed you the making?’

  ‘No one!’ Tallis said sharply, confused again. ‘No one showed me.’

  ‘Someone must’ve showed you. Someone whispered to you …’

  ‘Anybody can make dolls,’ Tallis said defiantly. ‘You just take a bit of wood, and a knife from the shed, and sit down and cut. It’s easy.’

  Even as she spoke, she had an image of Green Mask, but she struggled hard not to let that enigmatic figure confuse her conversation, now.

  ‘It’s easy for them as knows,’ Gaunt said quietly. Then he stared back at Tallis, who met his gaze unflinchingly for as long as she could bear. His grey eyes, dark-rimmed, stared so hard at her from the flushed, weatherbeaten face that at last she gave in and looked away.

  He said, ‘There’s dolls for playing with, young madam. And there’s dolls for praying with. And as sure as pigs have ticks you don’t play with the dolls you make.’

  ‘I do. I play with them all the time.’

  ‘You hide them in the ground. And you give them names.’

  ‘All dolls have names.’

  ‘Your dolls don’t have Christian names, and that’s for sure.’

  ‘My dolls’ names are my own business,’ she said.

  ‘Your dolls’ names are the devil’s business,’ Gaunt retorted, and added almost inaudibly, ‘Broken Boy’s Fancy …’

  He rose stiffly from the bench and rubbed the lower part of his back. As he walked away across the garden Tallis watched him, puzzled by what she felt to be his sudden anger, saddened by it. She couldn’t think what she had done. He had been friendly, chatty, then abruptly turned hostile; just because of her dolls.

  Gaunt called back, ‘You’re your grandfather’s girl, all right.’

  ‘I don’t remember him,’ she said, kicking beneath the bench, her knuckles white where she gripped the seat.

  ‘Don’t you just …’ Gaunt said, then turned in the middle of the lawn to stare back at the girl. He thought hard for a moment, then came to a quick decision. ‘All I want to know is … if I ever ask you for help … and I don’t mean now, not yet, not for a while … but if I ask you for help …’

  He hesitated and Tallis thought that he looked nervous, more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him, watching her in a knowing, almost fearful way. ‘If I ask you for help,’ he repeated, ‘will you help?’

  ‘Help what?’ she said back, equally nervous and very puzzled. She really didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  ‘Will you help me,’ he said again, putting strange emphasis on the w
ords. ‘If I ask for help … will you help me!’

  She didn’t answer for a moment. Then, ‘What killed the rat?’

  After the briefest of pauses Gaunt smiled thinly, shaking his head as if to say, ‘Clever little so-and-so’. ‘You’d bargain with me, would you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tallis said. ‘I’ll bargain with you.’

  ‘Water,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I thought so,’ Tallis said. She shrugged. ‘Yes. I’ll help. Of course I’ll help.’

  ‘That’s a promise then,’ he said, and wagged a finger. ‘And a promise broke is a life choked. We’ll call this one “Gaunt’s Asking”. Don’t forget.’

  Tallis watched him go, her small body shaking, deeply disturbed by his words. She liked Mr Gaunt. He was disgusting, and he teased her, and he always smelled of sweat; but he was a comforting presence and she could not imagine life without him. He told her silly stories and showed her bits and pieces of nature. Sometimes he got irritable with her, sometimes he seemed unaware of her. But until today he had never confronted her.

  She liked him and of course she would help him … but in what way? What had he meant by that? Help him. Perhaps he had meant help him to make dolls, but that seemed unlikely. And why had he been so upset by her dolls (and where had he seen her making them?). Her dolls were things that were special to her, part of her game. They had meaning for Tallis Keeton, but for no one else. They were fun, and they were magic, but their magic was a special magic and had nothing to do with the gardener, or her parents, or anyone else.

  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.