Free Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) by Robert Holdstock Page A

home?
    Back in the house, he noticed that the kitchen had been disturbed. It had been untidy when he’d found it, and had become worse while he’d been here. Jack was not a tidy man. An animal, perhaps, had been in. On the floor were cans which he had left on the work surface. For a long moment he stood in silence, listening, but there was only the sound of the hens clucking as they pecked at the ground, and of the rustling breeze.
    He went to the study. His bedroll and blanket were as he’d left them, in the corner, but the exercise-book journal was gone. And there was a rank smell in the room. And the sound of soft breathing.
    He turned and nearly fell backwards across the desk as his face almost touched the face of George Huxley. The man was standing an inch away from him, and staring so deeply into his eyes that Jack felt overwhelmed, almost paralysed by that gaze.
    ‘Who are you?’ Huxley whispered. ‘Are you the ghost-lit boy?’
    Gently, Jack pushed the old man back a little. ‘I believe I am.’
    Huxley looked scared. He was clutching the exercise book to his chest with both hands. The fabric of his tweed jacket was crumbling. His beard had grown coarse, his hair longer and wilder, hanging around his shoulders.
    ‘Who are you?’ he whispered again, then looked around the study as if seeing it for the first time. His gaze back on Jack’s, he said, very softly and uncertainly, ‘You’ve been here before. I could tell you were here. I couldn’t see you. But now I see you. I have a son. Steven. You look very much like him.’
    ‘I’m Steven’s son. Your grandson.’
    Huxley mouthed the word silently. Aloud he said, ‘Ysso bel ...’
    ‘Your granddaughter. She takes after her mother. Guiwenneth.’
    Again, the silently mouthed name, repeated several times, eyes distant as if summoning memory. ‘So beautiful. So beautiful. I remember when she watched me from the garden, curious and lost. So beautiful. She went away again, back into the wood. I followed her and found her, but she ran from me. So beautiful. Out of a dream.’
    His speech had been dreamy too. Now he frowned. ‘Yssobel. Who has been whispering to me about Yssobel?’
    ‘I have. My sister is lost. Something has taken her; or she has gone to destroy something that was trying to take her.’
    Huxley was thoughtful, cocking his head as if listening to a distant voice, brow furrowed, eyes questioning. Then, in his ghostly, distant voice, he repeated what he had perhaps remembered, the bare bones of a tale. ‘Yssobel stole the armour of a king. She fought in the armour of that king. And she died in the armour of that king.’ He paused, searching. ‘She followed the shadow of the king’s stone - and came to the night-black lake. She crossed to the underworld in the king’s boat. There she exacted vengeance. There she healed a wound that had cut deeply. Yssobel . . .’
    He stepped back to the desk and put down the book, stroking the cover almost regretfully, his hair obscuring his face and his expression. ‘Yssobel,’ he repeated, as if relishing the name. ‘The image of her mother.’
    She followed the shadow of the king’s stone . . .
    An odd change was happening in Huxley. He sat down in the desk chair and stared at his hands. The skin was dry and cracked, the knuckles showing hard and swollen like the knots on the branches of trees. The aura around him was of mould. Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, though he showed no signs of being sad.
    Looking up at Jack, he searched the young man’s face, then smiled affectionately. ‘You are! Yes. The image of my son. But then - how do I remember?’
    He went into a huddle of thought, staring at nothing. Then in an authoritative and firm tone of voice he suddenly said, ‘There are parts of the wood where the generative powers are very strong. I call them vortices. They are associated with springs, or trees, usually oak and elm. Sometimes with clearings, especially those with shrines