Free Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) by Robert Holdstock

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