Read Online Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) by Robert Holdstock - Free Book Online

land
, and sometimes when she woreor carried the crudely fashioned oak-bark the stories crowded and jostled her mind with such intensity that she could concentrate on nothing else. The third mask, made from hazel and painted green, she called
Skogen
, but this, too, had a second name,
shadow of the forest
. It was a landscape mask; when she held it to her face, the cloud shadow on the land seemed different: it cast patterns that might have been the shadows of higher hills and older forests.
    Over the years she became an expert at the craft; she worked masks from different wood, became skilful at trimming down the bark and cutting the holes for eyes and mouth. She developed, or purloined, a number of tools to make the crafting easier, even using differently-shaped heavy stones as hammers, chippers and gougers.
    To the first three she added four more.
Lament
was the simplest; a few days after carving this from willow bark she heard the first of several songs from the field called The Stumps; she was also aware of the haunting presence of the female ‘hollower’, her white and red mask catching the grey light of an overcast day as she watched Tallis from the hedges. Lament was a sad mask, its mouth sullen, its eyes tearful; its colour was grey.
    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