Read Online Christopher Golden - The Veil 01 - The Myth Hunters by The Myth Hunters - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: The Myth Hunters
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going to happen to me tomorrow. Now . . . I don’t have the first idea what’ll happen in the next five minutes. All I do know is that I don’t want to die. And that I have to get home.”
Even as he said this last, there was regret in his heart. Did he really have to? But the answer was yes. Whatever became of his life, he couldn’t just leave Julianna without explanation, couldn’t disappear on his sister forever. He would not hurt them like that. Oliver wasn’t sure what he had to go home to, but he cared too much for them to stay away forever.
Unless you die, he thought. But he put that thought into a mental box with all of the other unpleasant things that had come into his head since the impossible had taken over his life.
“So, explain it to me,” he went on, trailing Frost by a few paces, trying to get abreast of him, to look into his eyes. “You’ve told me very little about this place. About the Veil. But we’ve obviously got nothing but time here. So talk to me. Please.”
CHAPTER 4
O liver and the winter man walked on for a time with the request hanging in the air between them. Talk to me, Oliver had said. They came to a ridge of rocky ground that rose up from the forest floor like the spine of some massive beast. It would have provided a good view of the area around them and a path free of trees, but Frost stayed in the lee of the ridge and kept on to the east, and Oliver could do nothing but follow.
The winter man glanced up into the branches, and then surveyed the woods around them. He slowed a moment, peering off into the undergrowth, and Oliver wondered what he might have seen that could have unnerved him. But the thought was brushed aside when Frost looked over his shoulder and even slowed his gait enough so that they were walking side by side. The winter man’s pale blue eyes seemed to shine with an inner light. Oliver thought it was probably just the moon, but it occurred to him that in this world he could not be sure of anything.
“To begin, you must assume that everything is real,” said the winter man. “Every story, every fairy tale, every myth and legend. Of course, not all of them are, and most of the stories you know are only versions of the truth, tainted by the storytellers over the course of centuries and millennia.”
Something rustled in the brush off to the left again and this time both Frost and Oliver turned to glance in that direction for several seconds. They continued on, however, and Oliver found himself studying the darkest places in the forest far more carefully, mindful of the tension in the winter man. The Falconer could not follow them this quickly, according to what Frost had said, but from his behavior it seemed this was little comfort.
“You’ve said as much before,” Oliver replied. “So there’s the real world, and all of the old legends are sort of walled up behind the Veil, but—”
Icy mist fumed from the winter man’s nostrils and his brows knitted. “The ‘real world’? That is precisely the sort of thinking that you must abandon. In the Once Upon a Time that starts so many of your stories, people understood that the magical and unusual existed just beside the mundane and the human, on the periphery of awareness. Then the world became more civilized. . . .”
Frost sneered the word.
“Industry grew and cities overran the world. The human cultures became more organized and the creatures of legend were demystified. Some hid away in caves and rivers and secret cities of their own— lost cities, to your history— but others were hunted. Destroyed. Your kind was no longer afraid of the dark, or not enough for our protection. Humanity had lost its respect for magic and shadow, and that was dangerous to us.
“So we left.”
Oliver glanced sidelong at Frost. There was such finality in those words that the winter man made it sound so
Even as he said this last, there was regret in his heart. Did he really have to? But the answer was yes. Whatever became of his life, he couldn’t just leave Julianna without explanation, couldn’t disappear on his sister forever. He would not hurt them like that. Oliver wasn’t sure what he had to go home to, but he cared too much for them to stay away forever.
Unless you die, he thought. But he put that thought into a mental box with all of the other unpleasant things that had come into his head since the impossible had taken over his life.
“So, explain it to me,” he went on, trailing Frost by a few paces, trying to get abreast of him, to look into his eyes. “You’ve told me very little about this place. About the Veil. But we’ve obviously got nothing but time here. So talk to me. Please.”
CHAPTER 4
O liver and the winter man walked on for a time with the request hanging in the air between them. Talk to me, Oliver had said. They came to a ridge of rocky ground that rose up from the forest floor like the spine of some massive beast. It would have provided a good view of the area around them and a path free of trees, but Frost stayed in the lee of the ridge and kept on to the east, and Oliver could do nothing but follow.
The winter man glanced up into the branches, and then surveyed the woods around them. He slowed a moment, peering off into the undergrowth, and Oliver wondered what he might have seen that could have unnerved him. But the thought was brushed aside when Frost looked over his shoulder and even slowed his gait enough so that they were walking side by side. The winter man’s pale blue eyes seemed to shine with an inner light. Oliver thought it was probably just the moon, but it occurred to him that in this world he could not be sure of anything.
“To begin, you must assume that everything is real,” said the winter man. “Every story, every fairy tale, every myth and legend. Of course, not all of them are, and most of the stories you know are only versions of the truth, tainted by the storytellers over the course of centuries and millennia.”
Something rustled in the brush off to the left again and this time both Frost and Oliver turned to glance in that direction for several seconds. They continued on, however, and Oliver found himself studying the darkest places in the forest far more carefully, mindful of the tension in the winter man. The Falconer could not follow them this quickly, according to what Frost had said, but from his behavior it seemed this was little comfort.
“You’ve said as much before,” Oliver replied. “So there’s the real world, and all of the old legends are sort of walled up behind the Veil, but—”
Icy mist fumed from the winter man’s nostrils and his brows knitted. “The ‘real world’? That is precisely the sort of thinking that you must abandon. In the Once Upon a Time that starts so many of your stories, people understood that the magical and unusual existed just beside the mundane and the human, on the periphery of awareness. Then the world became more civilized. . . .”
Frost sneered the word.
“Industry grew and cities overran the world. The human cultures became more organized and the creatures of legend were demystified. Some hid away in caves and rivers and secret cities of their own— lost cities, to your history— but others were hunted. Destroyed. Your kind was no longer afraid of the dark, or not enough for our protection. Humanity had lost its respect for magic and shadow, and that was dangerous to us.
“So we left.”
Oliver glanced sidelong at Frost. There was such finality in those words that the winter man made it sound so
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