Free Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) by Robert Holdstock Page B

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 meanand 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