Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle)

by Robert Holdstock

  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?’

  Again there was just the confused gabble of words. A child began to laugh. On the cold wind came the smell of sweat and animals, like the smell of hide taken from a deer. A woman started to sing.

  ‘My name is Tallis!’ the girl called. ‘Tallis! Who are you? What’s your name?’

  Her words were met by the sound of anguished cries. The dark shapes moved in that other world, blocking out the light of the torch, then exposing it again. The flame guttered in the fierce, freezing wind, and even as Tallis listened so she heard the distant fire begin to roar, and wood crackle; the darkness beyond the gate began to glow with the faintest hint of burnished gold.

  Riders were coming. She could hear their rapid clatter on loose stones, their angry cries, the noise of horses, forced to scramble on dangerous slopes.

  She tried to count them. Four horses, she thought. Four animals. But she quietly acknowledged that she had no real way of telling; more than one … not more than a lot!

  She listened carefully. The arrival of the riders had caused movement, shouting, chaos. One of them – a man – cried out, angrily. A dog barked, panic-stricken. The wailing child wailed even louder. Wind, gusting coldly, made the bigger fire suddenly roar and flare so that frantic dark movement became fleetingly visible against the brightening glow of the sky glimpsed through the gate.

  And it was at that moment that she heard her name shouted.

  For a second she was almost too stunned even to think. Then the man’s voice began to familiarize itself to her. She remembered her early childhood and Harry’s laughter. She heard again his teasing words as he imprisoned her on the lower branches of the oak by Stretley Stones field. The two voices danced around each other: that from the summer of her past; that from the fire-raging winter of the underworld.

  And instantly they fused, because they were the same.

  ‘Tallis!’ her brother shouted, from a place that was so close yet so far. ‘Tallis!’

  And his voice thrilled her; there was desperation in it; and sadness. And longing; and love too.

  ‘Tallis!’ for the last time: a lingering cry, shouting to her through the strip of no-place that separated her from that forbidden place of winter.

  ‘Harry,’ she screamed back. ‘Harry! I’m here! I’m with you!’

  Snow gusted through the gate. Acrid smoke made her choke. One of the horses screamed and Tallis could hear the way its rider urged it calm.

  ‘I’ve lost you,’ Harry called to her. ‘I’ve lost you, and now I’ve lost everything!’

  ‘No!’ Tallis shouted back to him. ‘I’m here …’

  The cold wind blew her back. She could hear the storm beyond the gate, and the restless sounds of the frightened people who gathered there. She looked up, looked around. If only there were some way of opening this narrow strip of contact!

  And even as she shouted, ‘I’ll come to you, Harry … wait for me!’ Even then, the gate was fading.

  Had he heard those last words? Was he waiting there, crouched in the cold, watching the thin-space, the thread of contact, still rejoicing at the glimpse of his fair-haired, freckled sister? Or was he weeping, feeling abandoned by her?

  She felt her own tears rise to sting
her eyes, and she rubbed them fiercely. Taking a deep breath she sank back on her ankles and stared at the darkness, listening to the silence. There was the briefest of movements on the other side of the greenhouse glass, and Tallis glimpsed the white flash on the mask she called the Hollower. The figure had been there all the time, then.

  Her hand was cool with smudged tears, but there was a deeper cold, the cold of the snow that had settled on her flesh. The vision had been no dream. And if the snow was real, then so had been her brother’s voice, and the contact with the forbidden world in which he wandered, lost, lonely, and from the sound of him … very much afraid.

  Lost. In a world whose name she did not know. She called it Old Forbidden Place. Everything was right about that private name.

  Tallis stood up and went out into the garden, balancing on the lower bars of the gate to the fields. It was a bright, starlit night. She could see clearly Morndun Ridge and the clustered trees on the earthworks of the old fort. In the stillness she could hear the faint sound of water running, probably in Fox Water. All around her, in fact, she could see hints, or hear sounds, of the night life that existed on the land …

  All around, that is, save in the direction of Ryhope Wood, the wood which was the source of Harry’s sadness. There, that sombre forest was a void within the darkness, a dizzying black emptiness that seemed to suck her towards it, a small fish to a great and all-consuming mouth.

  (vi)

  The clatter of a pot in the kitchen of the house disturbed Tallis’s reverie. She didn’t know how long she had been standing at the gate, staring across the silent land, but it was dawn, now, and the sky was rich with colour over Shadoxhurst village.

  Her body felt fresh and energetic, almost excited, and she ran to the back door, bursting into the kitchen. The action was so sudden, so startling, that her mother dropped the pan of water she was carrying to the stove.